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Mayan Sign Language
Mayan Sign Language is a sign language used in Mexico and Guatemala by Mayan communities with unusually high numbers of deaf inhabitants. In some instances, both hearing and deaf members of a village may use the sign language. It is unrelated to the national sign languages of Mexico (Mexican Sign Language) and Guatemala ( Guatemalan Sign Language), as well as to the local spoken Mayan languages and Spanish. Yucatec Mayan Sign Language Yucatec Maya Sign Language, is used in the Yucatán region by both hearing and deaf rural Maya. It is a natural, complex language which is not related to Mexican Sign Language, but may have similarities with sign languages found in nearby Guatemala. As the hearing villagers are competent in the sign language, the deaf inhabitants seem to be well integrated into the community – in contrast to the marginalization of deaf people in the wider community, and also in contrast to Highland Mayan Sign Language. The oral language of the community is th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico covers ,Mexico ''''. . making it the world's 13th-largest country by are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries. It is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The largest population of native speakers is in Mexico. Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesoamerican Languages
Mesoamerican languages are the languages indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize and parts of Honduras and El Salvador and Nicaragua. The area is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity containing several hundred different languages and seven major language families. Mesoamerica is also an area of high linguistic diffusion in that long-term interaction among speakers of different languages through several millennia has resulted in the convergence of certain linguistic traits across disparate language families. The Mesoamerican sprachbund is commonly referred to as the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. The languages of Mesoamerica were also among the first to evolve independent traditions of writing. The oldest texts date to approximately 1000 BCE (namely olmec and zapotec), though most texts in the indigenous scripts (such as Maya) date to c. 600–900 CE. Following the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th cent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Village Sign Languages
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Though villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement. In the past, villages were a usual form of community for societies that practice subsistence agriculture, and also for some non-agricultural societies. In Great Britain, a hamlet earned the right to be called a village when it built a church. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, biological (or physical) anthropologists, linguistic anthropologists, linguists, medical anthropologists and applied anthropologists in universities and colleges, research institutions, government agencies, museums, corporations and non-profits throughout the world. The AAA publishes more than 20 peer-reviewed scholarly journals, available in print and online through AnthroSource. The AAA was founded in 1902. History The first anthropological society in the US was the American Ethnological Society of New York, which was founded by Albert Gallatin and revived in 1899 by Franz Boas after a hiatus. 1879 saw the establishment of the Anthropological Society of Washington (which first published the journal ''American Anthropologist'', befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kʼicheʼ Language
Kʼicheʼ (, also known as among its speakers), or Quiché (), is a Mayan language of Guatemala, spoken by the Kʼicheʼ people of the central highlands. With over a million speakers (some 7% of Guatemala's population), Kʼicheʼ is the second most widely-spoken language in the country, after Spanish. It is also the most widely-spoken indigenous American language in Mesoamerica. The Central dialect is the most commonly used in media and education. Despite a low literacy rate, Kʼicheʼ is increasingly taught in schools and used on the radio. The most famous work in the Classical Kʼicheʼ language is the '' Popol Vuh'' (''Popol Wuʼuj'' in modern spelling). Dialects Kaufman (1970) divides the Kʼicheʼ complex into the following five dialects, with the representative municipalities given as well (quoted in Par Sapón 2000:17): ;East * Joyabaj *Zacualpa *Cubulco * Rabinal *San Miguel Chicaj ;West *Nahualá * Santa Clara La Laguna *Santa Lucía Utatlán * Aldea Argueta, S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yucatec Maya Language
Yucatec Maya (; referred to by its speakers simply as Maya or as , is one of the 32 Mayan languages of the Mayan language family. Yucatec Maya is spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize. There is also a significant diasporic community of Yucatec Maya speakers in San Francisco, though most Mayan Americans are speakers of other Mayan languages from Guatemala and Chiapas. Etymology According to the Hocabá dictionary, compiled by American anthropologist Victoria Bricker, there is a variant name , literally "flat speech"). A popular, yet false, alternative etymology of Mayab is "ma ya'ab" or "not many," "the few" which derives from New Age spiritualist interpretations of the Maya. The use of "Mayab" as the name of the language seems to be unique to the town of Hocabá, as indicated by the Hocabá dictionary and is not employed elsewhere in the region or in Mexico, by either Spanish or Maya speakers. As used in Hocabá, "Mayab" is not the recognized name of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of methods, including spoken, sign, and written language. Many languages, including the most widely-spoken ones, have writing systems that enable sounds or signs to be recorded for later reactivation. Human language is highly variable between cultures and across time. Human languages have the properties of productivity and displacement, and rely on social convention and learning. Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between and . Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, writ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yucatán Peninsula
The Yucatán Peninsula (, also , ; es, Península de Yucatán ) is a large peninsula in southeastern Mexico and adjacent portions of Belize and Guatemala. The peninsula extends towards the northeast, separating the Gulf of Mexico to the north and west of the peninsula from the Caribbean Sea to the east. The Yucatán Channel, between the northeastern corner of the peninsula and Cuba, connects the two bodies of water. The peninsula is approximately in area. It has low relief, and is almost entirely composed of porous limestone. The peninsula lies east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrowest point in Mexico separating the Atlantic Ocean, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, from the Pacific Ocean. Some consider the isthmus to be the geographic boundary between Central America and the rest of North America, placing the peninsula in Central America. Politically all of Mexico, including the Yucatán, is generally considered part of North America, while Guatemala an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mayan Languages
The Mayan languagesIn linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and as the adjectival form. form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica, both in the south of Mexico and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million Maya people, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name,Achiʼ is counted as a variant of Kʼicheʼ by the Guatemalan government. and Mexico recognizes eight within its territory. The Mayan language family is one of the best-documented and most studied in the Americas. Modern Mayan languages descend from the Proto-Mayan language, thought to have been spoken at least 5,000 years ago; it has been partially reconstructed using the comparative method. The proto-Mayan language di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guatemala
Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by Honduras; to the southeast by El Salvador and to the south by the Pacific Ocean. With an estimated population of around million, Guatemala is the most populous country in Central America and the 11th most populous country in the Americas. It is a representative democracy with its capital and largest city being Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción, also known as Guatemala City, the most populous city in Central America. The territory of modern Guatemala hosted the core of the Maya civilization, which extended across Mesoamerica. In the 16th century, most of this area was conquered by the Spanish and claimed as part of the viceroyalty of New Spain. Guatemala attained independence in 1821 from Spain and Mexico. In 1823, it became part of the Fe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guatemalan Sign Language
Guatemalan Sign Language or "Lengua de Señas de Guatemala" is the proposed national deaf sign language of Guatemala, formerly equated by most users and most literature equates with the sign language known by the acronymic abbreviations LENSEGUA, Lensegua, and LenSeGua. Recent legal initiatives have sought to define the term more inclusively, so that it encompasses all the distinctive sign languages and sign systems native to the country. The first dictionary for LENSEGUA was published in 2000, and privileges the eastern dialect used largely in and around Guatemala City and by non-indigenous Ladino and mestizo populations in the eastern part of the country. A second dialect is "spoken" in the western part of the country, especially by non-Indigenous mestizo and Ladino populations in and around the country's second largest city, Quetzaltenango, located in the western highlands. The eastern and western dialects are mutually intelligible for the most part, although they employ sligh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
